A public transport line is generally provided to serve a whole series of stations. Each vehicle on the line covers a fixed route stopping at each station in succession for the passengers to get in and alight. The drawback of lines of this type is that they lead to journeys, whose time it is difficult to reduce beyond certain limits. The travelling speed of the vehicles may be increased slightly, but it is impossible to avoid the length of stopping times at stations. For a passenger making a journey of several stations, the time lost in useless stops becomes considerable.
Continuous line transport systems are known, comprising one track or line, along which carriages which never stop travel constantly. The transportation capacity of the line is thus increased. However, to allow the passengers to embark or disembark at the stations, it is necessary to vary the travelling speed of the carriages: each carriage travels at high speed between two stations, it decelerates when it arrives at a station, passes through this station at reduced speed to allow embarkation, then once more reaccelerates to reach the high speed, which it maintains until the next station.
This type of transport, considered to be the transport means of the future, at present encounters difficulties which are mainly due to two reasons:
- non-coherence of the load and of the infra-structure, PA0 - the necessity of providing complex control systems. PA0 a. The arrangement of all the platforms of all the tracks of the system have the same timed spacing all the time and at any point, whatever the speeds of these vehicle platforms and their separations; PA0 b. The parallel sections of two tracks along which the exchanges of cabins take place, are synchronous and have the same separation for exchangeable vehicles, i.e., for vehicles belonging to the same category, the timed spacing at a point being defined on a track as the interval of time elapsing between two passages at this point of two consecutive platforms relating to vehicles of the same categories. PA0 - a first intermediate track which travels between the two others; PA0 - a second intermediate track which comprises a section common to the first intermediate track located between two sections common to the first main track; PA0 - a third intermediate track, which comprises a section common to the first and second intermediate tracks located between two sections common to the second main track; PA0 - at least two of the intermediate tracks comprising regions of variable speed between each interval of two common sections. PA0 - a section AB common to the main track, PA0 - a deceleration section BC, PA0 - a very low speed section CD, in particular for passengers to alight and get into the vehicle, PA0 - a reacceleration section DE, PA0 - a section EF common to the main track, PA0 - a high speed return loop section FA.
Non-coherence is linked with the fact that the vehicles move closer together when they decelerate, whereas they move apart when they reaccelerate, such that the relative spacing of vehicles travelling at high speed on the main track is much greater than that which would be permitted by the infra-structure. In fact, this relative spacing of the vehicles depends on the minimum separation of the vehicles in the low speed embarkation regions, but does not depend on the infra-structure.
As regards the complex control systems, they are imposed by the necessity of controlling a depot of vehicles which pass from one track to the other by systems of points, bunched together whilst slowing down etc...
The object of the present invention is to provide an economical continuous transport system which avoids these drawbacks, for serving an urban region for example by public transport. pg,3